Saturday, April 07, 2007

Halloween Remake - How will it measure up?

There have been a lot of horror remakes in the past few years. The films remade include The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead, The Hills Have Eyes, andThe Wickerman.

Now we have Rob Zombie releasing a remake/prequel to Halloween.

I always thought Halloween was untouchable. Remaking it would be same as remaking Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street (I probably wouldn't be surprised if either of those are remade).

I would think, at this point, remaking Halloween would be a good thing, since the series was sequeled to death. However, I'm little iffy about Rob Zombies vision for the film. Based on interviews, he wants this film to concentrate more on Michael Myers and less on everyone else.

Michael Myers in the original film was great. It's not the killing that makes him scary, it is his emotionless presence. The most suspenseful scene of Halloween just involved Michael Myers calmly walking across the street towards Laurie Strode.

Rob Zombie said in interviews that he wants to explore the motives about why Michael Myers is the psychopath that he is and that the movie will be more about that and less about teenagers in peril. He thinks that it would unnerve the audience by seeing what makes Michael Myers tick. However, I would have the disagree.

I think the killer in Scream said it best that "it's a lot scarier when there's no motive." In the original Halloween, you never knew why Michael Myers was stalking Laurie Strode and that's what made things scary.

However, I'm probably getting ahead of myself. The film doesn't open until August, so I don't have much to go on.

Based on the trailer, it looks like there is going to be a much bigger body count in this film than the original (which only has 4 on screen deaths) and it looks like Michael Myers really goes on a murdering rampage. Whether that's a good thing remains to be seen, however I liked it in the original that you got to know the characters before they were killed.

In conclusion, is the Halloween remake going to be different than other horror remakes, or will it just be the same old case of trying to rewrite history.

About Sean Kelly -

Sean Patrick Kelly is a self-described über-geek, who has been an avid film lover for all his life. He graduated from York University in 2010 with an honours B.A. in Cinema and Media Studies and he likes to believe he knows what he’s talking about when he writes about film (despite occasionally going on pointless rants).